


Mad Baggins

by Mews1945



Category: Lord of the Rings (2001 2002 2003)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-21
Updated: 2006-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-08 17:19:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mews1945/pseuds/Mews1945
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's observations about the Master of Bag End.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mad Baggins

There's hobbits as says the new young Master of Bag End is as cracked as the old Master ever was. They say young Mr. Frodo has as many queer ways as old Mr. Bilbo ever did. Why just look at the things he does, they say. Like climbin' in trees. It ain't natural, they say.

They've never seen him like I have, layin' in the fork of the old crabapple that grows in the back garden, behind Bag End. He'll climb up there with a book to read, and fall asleep as easy as a babe in its cradle on a summer afternoon. None of them as gossips about him has seen him layin' there all loose-limbed and passin' fair, with the sun dapples fallin' through the leaves and shinin' like drops of honey on that white skin and his dark curls, with one hand as soft as the hand of a lass restin' on his breast while the other clasps his forgotten book. They don't see the way it eases the pain in his heart from missin' Mr. Bilbo.

And there's some says it ain't natural for a hobbit to swim, and I reckon as they could be right, if they're talkin' of most hobbits. But he's not like most of us, and for him it's right and natural to take off his clothes and stand there on the bank of the little pool that forms where the creek runs through the grove around the old party field. He looks like he's made out of sunlight and moonshadow when he just pauses there, lookin' out with that far-seein' gaze in his blue eyes, the same look Mr. Bilbo used to get in the evenin' when he'd stand on his doorstep and look out at the gatherin' night. And when Frodo dives into the water, it fair stops my heart, as shouldn't be watchin' him as I do from the shelter of the trees and the bushes growin' there, but I can't help myself. It stirs somethin' in me that I can't put a name to, but I feel it somewhere inside me, and it makes the tears come to my eyes and I have to blink and wipe them away, and then I turn and go and leave him to his aloneness, knowin' the vision will come back to haunt me when I go to my own lonely bed.

They say he's strange, and they blame it on his mama and his dad, for bein' queer enough to go out in a boat on the Brandywine and get themselves drownded for it. They blame it on his bein' raised over there in Buckland, amongst them Brandybucks, who everybody knows is odd folks and not like sensible hobbits as comes from Hobbiton. And they blame it on his bein' part Tookish, and bein' Fallohide, 'stead of a plain Harfoot like most of us is. Strange, they call him, and mayhap they'd be right. But it's a kind of strangeness that calls to me and draws me in, and makes me want to stay nigh him, because it feeds a longin' in me that I never knew before this summer, since Mr. Bilbo left, and I've come of age.

It makes me think there must be more, somehow. More than just the cookin' of his meals and the tendin' his garden, and the seein' to it he has fresh flowers on the table in his hall. It's in the way my hands want to touch him, and I want to lay a kiss on the softness of his mouth and see if it tastes as good as I imagine when I'm alone in the dark. A lad and a lad ain't usual, as they say, but it ain't unheard of neither, and who's to say it's right or wrong? If it's what both wants and it feeds that hunger in the heart, then who's to say it's not right for me and him?

The Gaffer says keep your place, boy, and let him keep his. But I say mayhap my place ain't the same as the Gaffer's place. Mad Baggins is different, they say. And I think they're right. And I think as how none of 'em knows it yet, but Samwise Gamgee's different too. And if I read the look in his eyes rightly, Frodo Baggins does know it. And I've girded myself with all the courage in me, so that today, when I go in to have tea with him, as we've been doin' now since I was just a little lad, I will take his hand and find out just how different we are.

End.


End file.
